I have new medium cherry cabinets in a new home that we have just purchased.  I would like them to be much darker.  Is it possible to do this without refinishing the cabinets?  What wood for flooring would you suggest to complement/contrast the darker cherry cabinets?

My answer:

To change the color of cabinets usually means you would need to refinish the cabinets to some degree, depending on their condition. Since yours are new and in good shape, you could clean the surfaces and apply a polyurethane finish with an integral stain over the finish you already have. Minwax Polyshades is one of these products. This would mean that you would not have to strip and sand the existing doors and cabinets. So if that’s what you mean by “refinish,” then the answer is, “No,” you won’t have to refinish new cabinets to change the color. You’ll merely have to add a colored finish on top of the existing finish. Just be sure to follow the directions exactly. Don’t skip any steps. You might try samples of colors on the backs (insides) of the doors before doing any of the fronts. That way you’ll see what you’ll get in an inconspicuous place.

 As far as wood flooring choices go, take a look at the medium to lighter woods, like white oak or even reclaimed heart pine. Don’t go dark with the floor if you are darkening your cabinets. Try for a nice, eye-pleasing contrast between the woods. I’m not sure where you’re located and what is available. But with the smooth cherry cabinets, you could select a flooring that has an “active” and interesting grain pattern, if you like. If oak is too grainy, take a look at rift sawn and quarter sawn oak before rejecting it. Normal, plain-sawn oak can have arch-shaped grain patterns that some folks don’t care for. Rift-sawn and quarter-sawn oak has a beautiful straight grain look and accents of what are called medullary rays, or pith rays. Rift sawn oak is one of my favorites. My mantel and adjoining cabinets in my family room are built of this wood.

 I hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

We are starting to select the different materials around the house.  Your beautiful pictures have been a great inspiration…  I particularly like your wooden floors on pages 114

Page 114 Photo from "Designing Your Perfect House"

and 194. 

Page 194 Photo from "Designing Your Perfect House"

Do you happen to remember/can you recognize the kind of wood they are made of?

Here’s my answer.

The wood floor on page 114 is Santos Mahogany. You can see another view of that flooring on page 150. It looks a bit different from one photo to another depending on the direction of the light. Santos Mahogany is one of the few woods that actually gets lighter when exposed to light. The wood you see in the photos has been in place since 2002. So it has already lightened.

The wood flooring on page 194 can be seen again on page 226. This wood floor is Jatoba. It is also known as Brazilian Cherry. But keep in mind that what is often sold as Brazilian Cherry is actually an assortment of pieces of three different species. Jatoba is one of them and I do not know what the other two species are. But some of the pieces of the other species can tend to look a bit greenish. So if you want the redder color, specify that all of the wood must be Jatoba without any other species included.

I always welcome questions and comments concerning anything related to house design, homebuilding, and remodeling. if they are questions i think other reader might like to hear, I’ll post them in my blog.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Metal roofs, now often referred to as “cool roofs,” can act like your light colored, open weave shirt and keep your house cooler in hot weather. They do this “passively”, that is they use no electricity in the process. Here’s why they work. In an article posted at Classic Metal Roofing Systems website, they list four energy benefits you’ll get with a metal roof.

1. Thermal Mass. Mass is the “weight” of a material. Stone has more mass than wood because a chunk of stone weighs a lot more than a the same-sized chunk of wood. Heavy asphalt roofs have a lot more mass than metal roofs. The higher the mass, the more heat a material can absorb. Although metal can get quite hot to the touch, it does not store heat in its mass and it will give up it’s heat more quickly soon as the sun goes down, or behind a cloud, or even when a breeze blows. So just like your open weave shirt, the material will cool down easily. Aluminum is even better than steel in this regard.

2. Color. Just like your light colored shirt, a light colored roof will absorb less radiant heat. I wrote a blog post about how I use passive solar principles to help clear snow and ice from my driveway. And color was the key. Here’s a link to that article, if you’re interested: http://www.designingyourperfecthouse.com/blog/2009/01/passive-solar-design-on-my-driveway/

3. Reflective Pigment. In the Classic Metal Roof Systems article, they say “Many dark-colored metal roofs now have reflective pigments so that good reflectivity is achieved even in dark colors.” This means that you are not limited to a silver or white roof to enjoy the benefits of an energy efficient, highly-reflective roof.

4. Integral Airspace. Metal roofs do not lay tightly against the roof sheathing. This means that a gap of air is created that insulates the roof sheathing from conducted heat coming from the metal. This airspace acts like a trivet or a pad you might place beneath a hot pan to keep from burning the countertop or table in your kitchen. Asphalt roofs lay tightly against the sheathing and continually conduct heat into your attic or rooms below, adding to your air-conditioning expense.

No matter what roof material you choose, be sure to provide sufficient attic ventilation. Metal roofs do not replace this essential design feature. But metal roofs will keep your attic and house much cooler and keep your air-conditioning electrical costs down significantly.

Metal roofs tend to cost more, initially, than shingle roofs. I’m researching this and looking for ways to control the added costs. I’ll report on this in future posts. If you have any experiences with metal roofing and the energy benefits, please post a comment. I would love to hear from you.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

Greys, and actually all colors, are grouped into two types, cool and warm. Cool greys have underlying blue tints. Warm greys have underlying tan or yellow tints. It’s easy to remember the terms if you think of ice being cold and blue while wood is brown and warm.

One common example of grey tones is seen most automobile interiors. We don’t have many choices of interior colors for cars these days. The choice is usually limited to black, tan, or grey. The tan is essentially a warm grey and the grey that is usually used is a cool, bluish grey. To get an idea of how greys can clash, imagine if you had a cool grey interior in your car and the door to the glove compartment was tan. Anyone with good color vision would readily see that something was wrong.  A warm grey mortar would look just as bad if it was used with a bluish grey stone on your house. Similarly, a cool grey grout would look bad with yellow or brown tile on your bathroom floor.

These same principles apply to all color selections. Match warm colors with warm colors and cool colors with cool colors.

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My husband and I just bought a house built in the early 60′s and it has the original white oak floors that have the aged yellow/orange look. I’m getting used to them, I think!  I don’t know what color to paint the walls that will compliment the floors.  I plan to invest in traditional wool area rugs with golds, greens, navy, and rusts colors.  I prefer lighter colors for walls but can’t seem to select one that doesn’t look so yellow.  Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Here’s my answer:

The yellow/orange color you see in the white oak floors is probably not the wood that has turned this color. It is probably the polyurethane finish. Oil-based polyurethanes yellow considerably over time. If you wish to get rid of the yellow, you could simply have them refinished. When the polyurethane is sanded off, the underlying wood will look like new and be the original white oak color. We did this in a house we bought in Wilmington, Delaware many years ago. The house had been built in 1918 and the floors were very yellow and had black spots, too. Once they were refinished, they looked brand new and wonderful.

A new oil-based poly will yellow a little, but not nearly as yellow as one that is many, many years old. And newer polyurethanes tend to be more color stable than those from some years ago. If you want to totally avoid yellowing in the future, you could use a water-based polyurethane finish. The water based finish will not yellow and is a little more durable than even the tough oil-base polyurethane, but some people feel it leaves the floor looking flat and a bit lifeless.

For the wall colors, you might want to consider picking up the other colors in the rugs, but in pale tones. A very pale green, with even a slight grey cast and not yellowish, can be a very handsome color and is in style these days.

To learn more about polyurethane finishes, you might want to visit www.minwax.com. they are a long-time manufacturer of high quality floor finishes of all types. Their website is full of tips, advice, and product information.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

    If you don’t believe me, try this little test. Go to the paint store, or your local Home Depot, and pick up a few color chips of paint. Be sure to get two of each color. When you get home, cut out the colors so that no white edges show. All you should have left is is small piece of paper with the color on it. Then place one of the chips on a white piece of paper and the other chip on some other color paper. Stand back and look at them. Do the colors look the same? I’ll bet they don’t.

    Color is influenced by its context. If you try to make your color selections standing in the paint store and you only look at the color as it’s shown on the sample card, which likely will have a white background, you may miss the subtle hues, only to notice them later when the entire house is painted and changing the color will cost you plenty.

    And speaking of hues, there is really no such thing as white. There are many colors of white. I know that sounds silly. After all, white is a color we can all identify. But actually there are many whites, each with its own unique underlying tone. A true white would be something along the lines of “copy paper” white, but even that may have a bluish cast when held up against a white with an underlying hint of yellow. There are “pinkish” whites, “greyish” whites, very, very pale yellows, and many more.

    You will have trouble seeing these nuances in a tiny paint chip. It is necessary to paint a larger sample wall to really see what subtle hues each white contains. So buy a can of the white you are considering and paint it on a wall. Let the paint dry before evaluating it and look at it on a sunny day, a cloudy day, and under artificial light. Chances are it will appear somewhat different in each condition.

    Most paint manufacturers group their paints in a way that will give you clues as to which “white” will go with which wall color. Let’s suppose you selected a Sherwin Williams color for the siding of your new house and it was “SW 6003, Proper Gray.” Then you were looking for the right white for the trim. How would you know which of the twenty-some whites they offer would go best with your siding color? In this case, you should select “SW 6000, Snowfall.” That’s because it is in the same color family as the siding color you already selected. In fact, all of the colors from SW 6000 through SW 6006, Black Bean, are in the same family. They all contain the same colors, but in varying intensities. So you can be certain they will go together. Another white, like SW 6049 Gorgeous White, might look just fine in a small sample. But when the trim was painted, it’s underlying brownish hue would show through and it would clash with the cooler gray of your SW 6003 siding.

    Dark colors can be just as tricky. Suppose you wanted a dark Green or a dark Burgundy for your shutters. You might be inclined to pick a color that looks nice and dark in the small chip. But I’ll warn you that when your shutters are painted and you stand back from them, your dark green will mysteriously morph into Kelly Green and your very ark Burgundy will look a lot more like a Red Zinfandel. Dark colors will look lighter in larger areas and when placed on darker backgrounds. So to get the truly dark Green or Burgundy, select one that looks nearly black in the paint chip. Then, paint out a larger area just to be sure.

    For the cost of a few cans of paint, you can avoid the costly mistake of having to repaint your entire house after the color gremlins change what you thought picked into something you never intended.

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    You’re in luck. There is now a solution. Replace those old-fashioned fluorescents with “full spectrum” fluorescents.

    These lights mimic the spectrum of light that the sun emits. Colors look right. They are accurate enough that designers are using them to illuminate color samples, just to make sure they can see the correct hues.

    As you may know from an earlier post, I am not a fan of the compact fluorescent bulbs due to the mercury they contain and the as-yet disposal issue. But for standard fluorescents, the long tube type, try replacing them with full spectrum bulbs and see if you agree that there is a noticeable difference.

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